helping a friend out, lift questions

[Stalfos]

Hello all, well, as the topic says, I'm helping a friend out who owns a super clean 1994 comanche. His wife drives a 2014 wrangler, she just got new rims and tires, basically leaving the old stock setup (with tires that have like 10k miles on them) to rot.

 

My buddy wants to put the stock rims from the wrangler on his comanche and I'm trying to figure out what he'd need to do to manage that. I've been doing some digging and unfortunately this is ALL greek to me. I've searched, I've read, I've looked but it's just not something to learn overnight, especially considering I'm a sports car guy. When I think suspension it usually ends up with a vehicle 2" closer to the ground, not 6" higher!

 

As far as I can tell the stock rims off the wrangler are 17's, tires are 255/75s -- Calculators say the outside diameter of these guys is something like 33" but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. All that having been said, what exactly would it take to fit that setup to the comanche..? I've been reading about body lifts vs suspension lifts, etc and without a good gauge of necessary lift, figuring out which direction to go is difficult. If it helps, the truck is basically just a work vehicle, no rock crawling, no "off road" unless you count poorly paved job sites and the crap roads in seattle. I'm sure he'd like to retain as much drivability as he can, specifically as little change to turning radius, etc as possible and of course nothing should rub at lock in either direction. Hopefully someone has some input -- I figured this would be the best place to ask rather than wasting a bunch of time and money and having to eat the cost of stuff that I suggested that didn't work. You know how it is... Anyway, please feel to provide any input if you wouldn't mind, bad or good. Either way, it'll be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[Eagle]

What year Comanche? Considering that 1992 was the last year of manufacture, I think we are starting off on a bad footing here ...

 

Just to get you started, the bolt circle on all years of the Comanche was 5 x 4.5". The 2014 Wrangler wheel bolt pattern is 5 x 5". In other words, those wheels won't bolt onto a Comanche without adapters -- which push the wheels out beyond the bodywork.

[Stalfos]

Good catch! Think I might've ended up with 1994 while thinking about that 2014 wrangler. Anyway, to correct, it's a 1992, 4 cylinder, apparently not 4wd if that helps at all.

 

Regarding the mount pattern, I think some more questioning may be in order. My understanding is that he mounted one of the wheels on his truck while doing a brake job last weekend however I wasn't witness to it. He made it sound like everything fit and the only issue was just body clearance. I think I'm going to have to pay him a visit and see what's going on for myself. If he actually did get the wheel mounted, I'm curious to see how and furthermore it might be a good time to stop a bad idea before it becomes a real problem.

 

Thanks for the info Eagle! I'll do a bit of probing and check back in once I've clarified with him.

[Dzimm]

Yeah I'm a little curious as to how the wheel would have bolted up..? Also you mentioned body lift in the first post, the Comanche and Cherokee are both unibody meaning the frame and body are one piece so you can't do a body lift. Suspension lifts are very easy to do but they do seem intimidating. Your best bet is to watch a few videos of a lift being put on a Cherokee since it's basically the same vehicle and videos are MUCH more common for them. I also want to mention that a lift specified for an XJ will not work on the MJ as far as the REAR. The front is exactly the same and will work fine, but the rear leaves are longer on the MJ and they are stiffer springs so if you use say a 3" lift add-a-leaf from an XJ, you will end up with closer to a 1" lift on the MJ. You can however use a lift Shackle from an XJ kit and get the advertised lift.

 

As far as fitting the wheels and tires, I would say 33" is about maximum size on a stock front end with minimal rubbing (your mileage may vary). You shouldn't get rubbing in the stock rear end with 33" so an option to consider if the truck has much rake, you can put some coil spacers in the front to bring the front up an inch or two leveling the truck out and maybe giving you the room to fit the tires. The problem with this route is that as soon as the bed has weight in it, your front end becomes taller than the rear. You do have quite a few options moving forward so based on how much work and money you want invested in it you'll have to decide what you can do.

 

Just remember, from the B-pillar forward, it is the same as a similar year XJ, there is more info out there on XJs and that info can be applied to the front of our trucks, lifts can be expensive and you don't want to cheap out on suspension parts because you will pay the price one way or another, we're here to help so keep asking questions, oh and last thing THIS IS AN ADDICTION! before long the truck will be 10 feet in the air with 40" tires and 500 hp and you'll end up with 2 MJs and 3 XJs in your own yard and hitting the trails every weekend.

[Eagle]

As far as fitting the wheels and tires, I would say 33" is about maximum size on a stock front end with minimal rubbing (your mileage may vary). You shouldn't get rubbing in the stock rear end with 33" so an option to consider if the truck has much rake, you can put some coil spacers in the front to bring the front up an inch or two leveling the truck out and maybe giving you the room to fit the tires. The problem with this route is that as soon as the bed has weight in it, your front end becomes taller than the rear. You do have quite a few options moving forward so based on how much work and money you want invested in it you'll have to decide what you can do.

 

Correction - about the largest size tires that will fit an MJ with no lift and no cutting of the body are 31x10.50 -- and that's only on factory Jeep (XJ or MJ) rims. On the factory rims, the fronts will fit up inside the fenders when compressed, but the tires will rub on the lower control arms at full steering lock. In the rear, the inside sidewall comes VERY close to the leaf spring and the inner fender liner. Just about all aftermarket rims have less backspacing so they're better in the rear but create more problems in the front.

 

Bolt pattern aside, I don't know what the wheel width or backspacing is for those Wrangler rims so I don't know how they fit into the picture. I would not think that a 277/75-17 is likely to fit an MJ without both a lift and some cutting of the sheet metal. If it's a nice, solid truck, it would IMHO be a shame to start chopping it up just to use some tires and wheels that don't belong on it.

[Dzimm]

 

As far as fitting the wheels and tires, I would say 33" is about maximum size on a stock front end with minimal rubbing (your mileage may vary). You shouldn't get rubbing in the stock rear end with 33" so an option to consider if the truck has much rake, you can put some coil spacers in the front to bring the front up an inch or two leveling the truck out and maybe giving you the room to fit the tires. The problem with this route is that as soon as the bed has weight in it, your front end becomes taller than the rear. You do have quite a few options moving forward so based on how much work and money you want invested in it you'll have to decide what you can do.

Correction - about the largest size tires that will fit an MJ with no lift and no cutting of the body are 31x10.50 -- and that's only on factory Jeep (XJ or MJ) rims. On the factory rims, the fronts will fit up inside the fenders when compressed, but the tires will rub on the lower control arms at full steering lock. In the rear, the inside sidewall comes VERY close to the leaf spring and the inner fender liner. Just about all aftermarket rims have less backspacing so they're better in the rear but create more problems in the front.

 

Bolt pattern aside, I don't know what the wheel width or backspacing is for those Wrangler rims so I don't know how they fit into the picture. I would not think that a 277/75-17 is likely to fit an MJ without both a lift and some cutting of the sheet metal. If it's a nice, solid truck, it would IMHO be a shame to start chopping it up just to use some tires and wheels that don't belong on it.

Thanks for the correction, I did mean to say 31" my bad, and I didn't think about the backspacing difference so I guess that would change wheel to wheel. More info would be needed in this situation.

 

Edit: the backspacing may not be as much of a concern if the bolt spacing is 5on5 you'll have to get adapters which will push the wheel out. Still may run though like Eagle said.

 

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[Eagle]

Backspacing is critical, and spacer/adapters are the same effect as running wheels with less backspacing. Stock XJ/MJ 15" rims have 5-1/4" backspacing, allowing tires up to 31x10.50-15 to tuck up inside the fenders when the suspension compresses. Run spacers or wheels with less backspacing, and then even 31x10.50s bang into the sheet metal and/or flares when the suspension compresses. 31s are a tight fit. In the rear on an MJ, the inside sidewall is VERY close to the leaf spring and body. When I would get home from a weekend at Paragon with the MJ, the inner fenders in the back would be black from the sidewalls rubbing when the suspension got twisted up.

 

The bottom line is, especially considering that those wheels won't fit an MJ without adapters, I just don't think it's a good idea to try to use them. Between the cost of a list and spacers and whatever else that might lead to -- it's cheaper to just buy tires that fit the stock wheels and skip the lift.